Marketing

Guinness chooses Two Roads

Guinness has gone down the road of collaborative brewing by announcing its first-ever beer collaboration with Two Roads Brewing Company based in Connecticut in the US.

This is the first time that it has collaborated with another brewer to create a beer.

Guinness and Two Roads Brewing combined their skills to marry two classic beer styles – Guinness and a Belgian Saison – creating unique and balanced Dark Saison beers.

The resulting beers were brewed at The Open Gate Brewery, Dublin and The Two Roads Brewery in the US, with the same theme and brewing specification used for each.

However each brew was adapted to use local botanicals. Irish mint, gorse and moss were used in the ‘The Open Road’ beer (brewed at The Open Gate Brewery in Dublin’s St James’s Gate).  Cedar and Sassafras from New England feature in the ‘May The Road Rise’ beer brewed at Two Roads Brewing Co in the US.

“Guinness has had a friendship with The Two Road Brewing Co for a while now,” explained the Head Brewer at Guinness Peter Simpson of the collaboration, “A few of our brewers previously visited the US brewery and our shared passion led us to start talking about the possibility of a collaboration beer. We’d no experience of brewing collaborations before this but both Guinness and the Two Roads Brewing Co foster a similar beer philosophy”.

Phil Markowski, Brewmaster at Two Roads Brewing Co, added, “I’ve tried Guinness Antwerpen Stout, a beer Guinness first brewed for the Belgian market in the 1940s, which got me thinking about the idea of a Guinness and Two Roads beer in the Belgian tradition.

“I met with Michael Donnelly and Peter Simpson at The Open Gate Brewery in Dublin and we figured out a way forward.  We’ve made beers that are distinctly Two Roads, distinctly Guinness and with some classic Belgian farmhouse characteristics and – of course – a few interesting twists.”

Mark Sandys, Global Head of Beer for Diageo, who’s based at St James’s Gate, commented, “These two beers will be produced in small quantities, but they represent a landmark for both companies.”

‘The Open Road’ and ‘May the Road Rise’ were released simultaneously at launch events at both The Open Gate Brewery in St James’s Gate and Two Roads Brewing Co.

 

 

 


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